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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded a study examining the impact of cross-sex hormones on adolescents’ mental health, and researchers claimed to find that the treatment caused improved mental health. While depression and anxiety declined slightly on average, two participants committed suicide, 11 developed suicidal ideation and biological males saw no improvements in depression, anxiety or life satisfaction. “All other psychiatric problems in teenagers are dealt with by thorough evaluation and investigation about the cause of their symptoms. … but for some reason transgender symptoms in adolescents, especially rapid onset, have been treated as an exception, and there are all these rationalizations doctors use to rapidly medicalize these kids,” Dr. Steven Levine, a psychiatrist, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. A National Institutes of Health-funded study published Jan. 19 in the New England Journal of Medicine claimed to find that cross-sex hormones caused … [Read more...] about NIH-Funded Study Claims Trans Hormones Improve Mental Health — Despite Patient Suicides

New oversight regulations aimed at limiting the risk of gain-of-function (GoF) research don’t go far enough to ensure the public will stay safe, scientists told the Daily Caller. The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), a panel within the National Institutes of Health (NIH), voted Friday to recommend new regulations on dangerous experiments that modify pathogens to make them more infectious or deadly toward humans. It will be up to the Biden administration to determine whether or not it will accept those changes and make them into official policy. The recommendations include extending oversight to less dangerous pathogens, getting rid of exemptions for certain research goals (like vaccine development or surveilling potential pandemic outbreaks) and holding research conducted outside the U.S. to the same standards as research done at home. Not everyone is convinced these steps will make a huge difference, though. “The NSABB recommendations fall short — … [Read more...] about ‘Strictly Window Dressing’: New NIH Gain-Of-Function Regulations Fall Far Short Of Protecting The Public, Experts Say

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin The Biden administration just announced on May 11 that it will end our Pandemic emergency declaration and this could test both health care and the economy. Crippled by vacancies in key health care leadership, what will the “end” of the Covid-19 health emergency look like and who will even explain it? President Trump first declared the emergency declaration on March 13, 2020 and it has been renewed multiple times. The White House announcement runs parallel to proposed legislation in the House of Representatives that calls for an immediate end to the emergency declaration based on an unfounded belief that the Covid-19 pandemic is over. The WHO still classifies Covid-19 as a global emergency while also acknowledging that the pandemic may be at a “ transition point .” The May 11 date fulfills the Health and Human Services Secretary, Xavier Becerra’s promise of a 60-day advance warning and increases it to 90 days. Rather … [Read more...] about The Next Covid-19 Crisis, May 11th And Our Missing Healthcare Leadership

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recently released updated clinical guidelines on the management of obesity in children. In 1998, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) designated obesity as a chronic illness. And in 2013, the American Medical Association (AMA) weighed in, calling obesity a “disease.” With over 14 million children in the United States being affected by obesity, it has become one of the most common chronic illnesses in children. The AAP issued guidelines delineating prevention and treatment of obesity in 2007, but the new recommendations are based on decades of evidence-based data on best practices for helping children with this condition. Obesity and being overweight are based on BMI, or body mass index . This is calculated based on one’s height and weight, with adult BMI measured numerically. An adult BMI of 25.0-29.9 is considered overweight and a BMI of 30 or over is considered obese. In … [Read more...] about New Guidelines On Childhood Obesity Are Met With Some Resistance

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Healthcare’s entry into a digital, consumer-first landscape is rapidly taking shape, and signs of progress are everywhere. Those signs are creating a wave of enthusiasm for the “digitized” future of our industry – and rightfully so. Wearables have shown the potential to encourage healthier living and promote wellness by providing visibility into an individual’s lifestyle habits. But, the utility largely ends there. Most physicians are not interested in reviewing data trends recorded on a personal device because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued only a small number of certifications for the benefits they claim to provide. There is no denying that wearables in particular empower patients with visibility into their health allowing them to take a more active role in leading a healthy lifestyle and potentially reducing their risk for conditions such as cardiovascular disease. With new and … [Read more...] about The Consumerization Of Healthcare Can Only Go So Far

Dr. Anthony Fauci was part of a group of scientists who, according to at least one of them, were working to “disprove” the lab-leak theory in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, emails show. Fauci, who at the time was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, worked alongside others, including National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, Wellcome Trust director Jeremy Farrar, Scripps Research’s Kristian Andersen and Dutch Virologist Ron Fouchier to investigate early evidence on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, emails obtained by journalist Jimmy Tobias revealed. On Feb. 8, 2020, Andersen wrote in an email that the group’s work was “focused on trying to disprove any type of lab theory.” Andersen ultimately became the first author listed on the paper “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” the most influential paper published about the origins of COVID-19 during the early stages of the pandemic. The paper was cited by more than 2,000 … [Read more...] about Fauci Was Part Of Group Assembled To ‘Disprove’ Lab Leak Theory, Emails Show

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin When the Harvard economist Mihir Desai last week heralded the crypto crash as the culmination of a 15-year long stretch of “magical thinking” in capitalism, he didn’t call out the healthcare industry directly, but he easily could have. All the elements have been there in spades: the stubborn belief that absurdly-inflated valuations would continue rising forever; the embrace of patient-facing technologies as panaceas for a thousand healthcare ills; scope creep so extreme that tech and e-commerce companies whose greatest achievements and innovations are 20 years old were somehow anointed as future saviors of healthcare. Talk about magical thinking. And so, just as Bitcoin bros have been humbled by the crypto crash, we’ve witnessed a parallel reckoning in healthcare. The venture bubble, which swelled in 2021, has shrunk to anemic levels to the point where there’s a scarcity of funding that’s impossible to ignore. … [Read more...] about Ending The Epidemic Of “Magical Thinking” In Healthcare

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Whom did new Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-California) appoint to serve on the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic? How about that person who has used “medical brown shirts” to refer to the Covid-19 vaccination campaign? Or maybe that person who’s compared the Covid-19 coronavirus to farts ? Could it be the the person who demanded Covid-19 answers by June 31, 2021 ? Well, McCarthy chose all of the above because one person, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) has done all of these things. And she was on McCarthy’s list for the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, that was posted on his website on January 24 . Hmmm, is Taylor Greene really the best person to sit on this Subcommittee? Is she your final answer? Do you want to phone a friend? How about ask the audience? Or perhaps you want to check your Peach Tree Dish ? In his announcement, McCarthy … [Read more...] about New House Speaker McCarthy Selects Taylor Greene For Coronavirus Pandemic Subcommittee

Republican senators, led by Roger Marshall of Kansas, are reintroducing legislation banning the federal government from funding gain-of-function research. Proponents argue that gain-of-function research , which is intended to make a virus more transmissible or deadly, can help scientists predict and prevent future pandemics. Chinese scientists were conducting the research on bat-based coronaviruses in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), where many speculate COVID-19 emerged from. U.S. taxpayer dollars were sent to the lab via a Department of Health and Human Services sub-grant, and many members of Congress believe that the federal government should reinstate a ban on funding the practice. Marshall’s bill prohibits the federal government from giving funds to any “ institutions of higher education, or other research institutes, that are conducting gain-of-func tion research.” President Barack Obama banned the federal government from funding gain-of-function research … [Read more...] about EXCLUSIVE: Republicans Renew Push To Ban Research That May Have Caused COVID-19

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin In the 1990s, the Pfizer cardiovascular (CV) research group in the UK was looking for new drugs to treat cardiovascular disease. This group had already scored some major successes in this area most notably with Norvasc (amlodipine) which became the premier calcium channel blocker for the treatment of hypertension. In the course of their work, the UK scientists explored blockade of a specific enzyme, phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE-5). Their early work demonstrated that blocking PDE-5 in animals enhanced blood flow to a variety of organs and that an inhibitor of PDE-5 could be of value in treating CV conditions such as angina and heart failure. The team was able to find a novel, potent PDE-5 inhibitor, UK-92,480, and they rapidly advanced this compound to the clinic. The initial trials in volunteers were disappointing. UK-92,480 had a minimal acute impact on important CV parameters such as blood pressure, heart rate, cardiac output … [Read more...] about New Data Indicates That Viagra May Protect Against Heart Disease